mdemchsak

Jun

2021

Food for the Soul

Man does not live by bread alone . . .

Feed me, O God. Feed me yourself, that I might know you more closely, love you more strongly, walk with you more constantly. I need to hear and to heed your words – not mine, not those of my friends or family or government or culture. I need to hear from you. How my soul thirsts for the living God and for a word from Him!

A growing boy needs to eat. When I was a child, I remember my mother saying, “Now eat your dinner. If you want to grow strong, you’ll have to eat.” And, of course, she was right. People who don’t eat, grow thin and weak. They are more prone to cold and sickness; they move more slowly and are often more irritable.

But when it comes to food, the message, “Eat” is incomplete, for growing boys need not just food but the right food. That’s why my mother would also say, “No dessert until you eat your vegetables,” for she knew that a healthy growing boy needed to fill his belly with healthy foods and not just any food. In fact, in America at least, we have all sorts of health problems not because people don’t eat but because they gorge themselves on cakes, chips, sodas, and fast food. If you eat too much junk, pretty soon your body becomes junk. You really are what you eat.

The soul is this way, too. Just as the body needs healthy food so, too, does the soul. But food for the soul is not beef or broccoli. Food for the soul consists in the thoughts you think, the ideas you read, the attitudes you see in movies or TV, the words you hear and speak – in short, the worldview you expose yourself to. And just as people often eat too many cookies and donuts, so, too, do people often feed their souls on too much junk food.

In the spiritual realm, healthy food is Biblical food, and junk food is everything else. Some of that junk food is spiritually neutral. It’s background noise – the cooking channel, a soccer team, your job. Everyone has such noise in their lives, and, like chocolate, it is not necessarily harmful in and of itself, but a diet consisting mostly of background noise will not move the soul toward God. Too many people cannot hear God through the noise. Other junk food is poison – sexual content in movies, celebrities who proudly mock Biblical teaching, peer pressure to think like your culture. These phenomena actively move the soul away from God. What you expose your mind and heart to affects how you think and live.

In the physical realm, the solution to too much junk food is simple. Eat more meat and vegetables and fewer pies and cakes. The same is true in the spiritual realm. The soul that feeds on the Bible grows strong, while the soul that neglects the Bible withers away. The soul with heavy exposure to the surrounding earthly culture and light exposure to God’s culture becomes thin, shallow, and distant from God. You really are what you eat.

This means that the Bible is essential for a vibrant spiritual life. The Bible is God’s message for the human race. It grounds people in ultimate matters and places their lives firmly on a solid rock, so that they can stand even when the waves of culture hit. Remove that rock, and people just bob in the sea, flowing back and forth wherever the waves take them.

The Bible points the soul to God. It shows us how God thinks, what He is like, and what He has done. It shows us why we are here and where we are going. It shows us our own hearts and what God wants those hearts to be. It shows us what a new life looks like and where the power comes from to live that life. The Bible is the meat and vegetables for a healthy spiritual life. It is where you go to renew your mind. It is what the soul must feed on. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Most souls, however, do not consume the Bible, and a majority of souls that identify as Christian do not consume the Bible. I don’t mean that none of them ever reads the Bible at all. I mean that most people in the church pay such scant attention to the Bible that they might as well not read it. The lack of Biblical content in the average “Christian” is staggering. Most people who identify as Christians spend minimal (if any) time each day feeding on the Bible but hours a day on social media, viewing movies, or listening to pop music. In other words, they feed on junk food. And their consumption shows. They have difficulty standing against the culture they feed on, and their walk with God is shallow. They feed their souls large amounts of donuts and cupcakes every day but rarely eat healthy.

They don’t know how God thinks because they don’t take the time to find out. They grow weak, fat and spoiled, and they hurt themselves and the church.

If you want to walk with God, you have to set time daily to get to know what He has said in Scripture . . . to meditate on it from the heart . . . to yield your soul to its authority. If you have access to the Bible and choose to ignore it, you cripple your soul.

But if you devote yourself to it, you have something substantial to build your life on, for it will point you to Christ. You are what you eat. Even in the soul.

May

2021

Needing the Church

I mentioned in the previous blog that the church is necessary to your spiritual life. When I talk like that, I occasionally get pushback from people who feel they can walk with Christ apart from His body.

Here are some reasons people give for separating from the body of Christ.

The church is dysfunctional.

Of course it is. And so are you. Some churches are more dysfunctional than others, and some churches you should get out of, but let’s not throw away the church with the dysfunction. Trying to follow God all by yourself is dysfunctional. If you, thus, abandon the church because it is dysfunctional, all you are doing is trading one form of dysfunction for another.

We live in a fallen world. Dysfunction is everywhere, and dysfunctional people in the church give you the opportunity to learn patience, to show grace, to practice hospitality and forgiveness, and to help you see how you look to God.

The church has hurt me

I’m sure it has. I do not question the pain. If I could offer an apology on behalf of the church that hurt you, I would gladly do so, but I am aware that an apology coming from me isn’t the same. I want you to know simply that I sympathize. I, too, have been hurt by the church.

Likely the pain you feel has come from the dysfunction we just discussed. I do not question the dysfunction.

But the church is your family, and families are full of dysfunction, and often they hurt us, but they are still family. What I want to ask you to do is to look beyond the details of your pain and to Christ. You should then see that the specifics of your case were not likely a result of people following Christ.

So follow Christ. But understand that if you do follow Him, He will point you back to His church. He always does. It is His Bride.

If the specifics are such that you cannot return to the same church, then find a different one. But find one that honors Christ and Scripture.

I don’t need the church in order to worship.

That’s a deceptive sentence. It’s like saying “I don’t need a family in order to live.” It is technically correct on one level but completely off base for life.

You see, technically, I have had worship experiences by myself, and technically God can show special grace to an Iranian Christian imprisoned for his faith. In neither case, however, is the person choosing to separate from God’s people. Why then, would someone choose to separate from God’s people and use this reason for doing so?

The fact of the matter is that in normal life you do need the church in order to worship, for corporate worship is commanded. God desires not just individual praise but corporate praise, and you cannot do that by yourself.

In addition, this objection assumes that the only purpose of the church is to help you worship. But the church helps your spiritual life in so many other ways as well. It helps you know God’s Word, it helps you pray, it provides a need for you, it shows you how to give, it helps you walk with integrity, and more.

Now you could say that all of these are part of worship, and I will not quarrel with you, but I would say that if they are, then you need the church in order to worship.

I don’t need the church to walk with God

That is like one of your hands saying, “I don’t need the eyes.” Or a foot saying, “I don’t need the ears.”

Do you really think that by yourself you can provide all the wisdom, faith, generosity, teaching, evangelism, leadership, service, and compassion that you need?

The notion that Christians can intentionally neglect meeting together fits America quite well, but it does not fit the Bible at all.

May

2021

The Church Command

As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another (Pr 27:17)

Lord, I praise you for your people. I thank you for surrounding me with them.

If you want to be good at something, it helps to see others who are good at it. Doctors do residencies so they can follow other doctors. They don’t learn medicine all by themselves. Instead, good doctors build good doctors. The Christian life is like this.

A basic principle of the Christian life is that it requires a church. You cannot live the Christian life all by yourself. You grow in Christ as you interact with a body of Christians. Christians need each other as soldiers need each other, as teammates need each other, as family members need each other.

Other Christians will pray for you, teach you, encourage you, rejoice with you, challenge you when you sin, and help you walk through a difficult problem. Other Christians understand the difficulties of living the Christian life. They know how hard it is to stand for Jesus in the midst of your culture. They can sympathize with your struggles. They’ve been there. Other Christians can talk with you on a deep level about the most important thing in your life – Christ. Non-Christians cannot do this. They don’t understand. You need Christians. You need a church.

Many people, however, talk about being spiritual without the church. In the West today, such talk is rampant. People want to follow God their own way. They live as if Christianity is merely a preference. You like roses, I like tulips. You like BMWs, I like Toyotas. You like yoga, I like Jesus. They live as if they get to decide what the Christian life is. They become the arbiter of how to follow God, as if God had nothing to say about the matter.

But God does have something to say about the matter, and one of the things He said was that His people should not forsake meeting together. God built the church with the blood of His Son. He loves the church. It is the bride of Christ, and the Christian who lives the Christian life loves the church and is committed to her.

The church is necessary for spiritual growth. One function of God’s people is to build each other up in the faith. Christians who put themselves in healthy churches become part of a community that will help them walk in Christ. Anyone who wants to follow Jesus needs a church. It is one of the tools God uses to sharpen our lives. You cannot follow Jesus by yourself.

And you can be by yourself in different ways. Some people are by themselves because they never attend a church. Others are by themselves in the midst of a church. They attend weekly, but they don’t know the people. They are part of the crowd on a Sunday morning, but they are not part of the life of the church. They listen to a sermon and go home, but they don’t know anyone. To belong to a church requires relationship and not just shoes in the room. When people lack relationship with the body of Christ, they fall away. Their walk with God grows weak, insipid. They become more like their culture and less like Christ. But they think they are spiritually fine because, after all, they are attending a church.

Being part of a church flows out of a desire for Christ. The people with the greatest desire for Christ are in a church . . . by choice. They surround themselves with the body of Christ . . . by choice. Because they have great passion for Jesus, they have great passion for the church. The two passions go together; in fact, you might say that the desire for a church is a visible expression of the desire for Christ. The church is the body of Christ. If you want Jesus, you want to be around those who have Him. This is rather basic.

God designed His people to be together. In heaven all His people will be together in unison. Church on earth prepares us for that day. Would you forsake God’s people in heaven? Then why would you do it on earth? The attempt to have Christian spirituality without Christian community is absurd.

Now I suppose I need to say a word about what a church is. This will be brief. If you want more, go here, here, and here. A church is not necessarily an official organization with a Christian name that meets in a building. You can attend many such meetings and not be with God’s people.

A church is a community of Jesus followers who fit the following criteria: they believe Scripture to be the Word of God and, consequently, adhere to the gospel of Christ; they meet regularly to worship Jesus, proclaim the Scriptures, and build one another up in the faith; they partake of communion and practice baptism of new believers; they share their faith, they desire to live a holy life and care for those who need help; they have elder leadership. These are broad parameters, and in the real world a church can look as different as a megachurch of 10,000 or a house church of four.

Whatever it looks like, this community is necessary for your spiritual growth. Life in Christ involves life in the church. When you intentionally put yourself outside the church, you harm your soul.

And many people today do just that. They harm their souls but have no idea the harm they cause. Let’s just get this straight. The church is not merely a nice addition. It is necessary for life — spiritual life.

Apr

2021

Desires

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Lk 9:23)

. . . I die daily. (I Cor 15:31)

Father, grant me the heart to give up my very being to you.

Living the Christian life is the hardest thing you will ever do.

It is also the most fulfilling thing you will ever do.

But isn’t that normal? Aren’t the hardest things in life usually the most rewarding?

Sometimes people act as if God made us just so He could forgive our sins, and then we could go live our lives as we wished. I know. It’s silly thinking. When you read Scripture you find that God made us for Himself, that we went and lived our own way, but that He responded with the Cross in order to remake us. He wants us conformed into the image of Christ. He then wants us, in Christ, to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to Him. To make such a sacrifice involves dying to self, and the soul does not want to do it. And yet, in Christ, the soul wants it. This is the irony of following Jesus: we want the very thing we don’t want. We have desires on different levels.

Jesus did too. At Gethsemane Jesus did not want to go to the Cross. He prays, “Remove this cup. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” Jesus explicitly states that it was not His will to go to the Cross. And yet it was. He went for the joy that was set before Him. He went because He delighted to do the will of the Father. He had desires on different levels.

The Christian who will live a godly life must want to do so. And he must want this so strongly that he is willing to die to see it happen.

We don’t talk this way in Christian circles today, but I would propose to you that the reason is that we don’t like the message of dying. We emphasize the comfortable truths of the gospel to the exclusion of the hard ones. But the gospel, whatever else it entails, entails a call to die. And the people who actually do this dying are the people who desire Jesus so passionately that they are willing to give up all for Him.

Dying to self is not so much a matter of exerting one’s will to mortification. Nor is it a matter of following a set of rules that emphasize self-denial – fastings, prayers, vigils, etc. People who die to self do so because they desire the kingdom of God more than they desire their personal desires. Thus, dying to self is not a negative endeavor. It is not primarily a subtraction of our desires but a fulfillment of a greater desire.

I’m not talking craziness. We understand this concept quite well, for people act this way all the time. When I was a boy, I had a morning paper route and would get up at 5 am to deliver newspapers. It was not my desire to get up at 5 am, but it was my desire to earn an income, so I died to my desire for sleep so that I could fulfill my desire to earn an income. In other words, my dying to one desire was not a subtraction or a personal negation. It was a necessary part of fulfilling a greater desire. This is why athletes lift weights, students write term papers, and parents drive their kids to soccer. All of these ordinary activities are pictures of dying to a small desire in order to fulfill a bigger one.

Biblical dying to self simply puts an exponent on the same principle. Jesus willingly went to the Cross even though He didn’t want to. Paul willingly suffered imprisonments, beatings, hunger, thirst, slander, and more, even though he didn’t want to. Daniel’s three friends were willing to forfeit their lives. Jeremiah faced constant abuse and opposition but kept preaching. Peter went to jail for preaching, and when freed he went right back to preaching. In all these cases and more, someone died to his life and comfort because he desired something higher. These people had a passion for God and His kingdom. They denied their desires because they were fulfilling their ultimate desire.

Without this ultimate desire for Christ and His kingdom, there is no living the Christian life. You cannot give up the career you always wanted just to die to it. But you can die to that career if you have a desire higher than that career. You cannot deny yourself money and comfort just to do it. But you can deny yourself those things if you desire something higher.

Now I need to say a word here about the nature of self-denial. Sometimes people give up the career they always wanted because they somehow think God wants us to have only the things we don’t want. They think it is more spiritual to deny themselves what they want. But this idea is not always true. Does a good father want his daughter to always deny her desires, or does he want her to actually enjoy some of those desires? In fact, he may do everything he can to help her pursue her desire to go to law school. And yet that same father may tell that same daughter to set aside short-term desires to pursue long term benefit. This is how God is. Earth is short term. The kingdom of God is long term. Biblical dying to self must occur when God lets us know that we need to set aside a particular desire for His sake. We must not, however, deny self just to do so. If our driving passion is for God, then the driving principle in our lives must be for what God wants. Sometimes He wants you to enjoy the desires of your heart. Sometimes He will call you to lay them down, but when you lay them down, you do so because, ultimately, He is your great desire, and, thus, you are then pursuing the desire of your heart.

Our desires are part of the foundation for living the Christian life. They are central to the Christian life itself. So look at your big desires. Are they focused on earth? If so, you handicap your ability to live for God. He wants to be your great desire.

Making God our main desire is something that we cannot do ourselves. This change comes from God’s Spirit in us. Perhaps the most basic work of the Spirit in a person deals with transforming the heart. The Spirit changes our desires, and it is these new desires that He then uses to spur us on to a new life.

A passion for Christ is foundational for living the Christian life. You can’t live a life that calls you to die to your desires unless you have a greater desire for Christ. You won’t let go of earth unless you want heaven. And you need God to help you want heaven. And the odd thing is that when you get heaven, you enjoy earth all the more. You find your life by losing it.

Mar

2021

The Christian Life and the Christian Reality

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (I Cor 6:19-20)

Praise you, Father, for you have made me a dwelling place for your Spirit, unworthy though I am.

Christianity calls you and me to live a life that seems impossible, and, indeed, would be impossible if it was not for the fact that Christ makes us new and indwells us through His Spirit. He makes us new through the Cross and Resurrection, by canceling our sins, making us clean, crucifying our old sinful nature, and raising us to new life as new creatures. We are born again – to use Jesus’ term.

In this sense, we are now saints – that is, people who have been sanctified. This means that, in one sense, we are holy. Not “we shall be holy,” but “we are holy.”

Yet in another sense, we must put into practice our holiness, and this putting holiness into practice is a lifelong process and struggle. We do not always live up to who we are. Sometimes Christians still sin, even though they are already sanctified. This idea that we are holy in one sense but working on our holiness in another can be hard to grasp, so let me try to illustrate.

Scripture says that husbands and wives are one flesh. But sometimes they live as two, even though in reality they are one, and the fact is that they are still one even when they do not live that way. Their life does not change the reality of what God has done. Or try this picture. Sometimes citizens do not live as citizens ought, but the fact is that they are still citizens even when they do not behave as such. There is an intrinsic reality, and there is a life, and the life does not always align with the reality. This is how it often is with the Christian faith. In reality, those in Christ are saints, dead to sin, alive to God, born again, new creatures, sanctified, holy. This is the reality. Christians, however, often fail to live out this reality perfectly.

But the genuine Christian takes seriously the business of living in holiness. The genuine Christian pursues a life that matches his or her reality in Christ. The genuine Christian life changes and grows in the direction of the reality. Christians fall as they grow, just a toddler falls when learning to walk, but they walk the path that pursues a life that reflects who they are. They are learning to be who they are, just as a new graduate is learning to be a graduate. Before the Christian became a Christian, he took his imperatives from the world around him. But now that he is in Christ, he takes his imperatives from Christ. His imperatives must reflect the indicative of who he is. The life must match the reality. And the reality is foundational to the life.

To live the Christian life requires first the reality. You must be a new creature to live a new life. But even then, this living of the new life is difficult. We live in a fallen world, and while we may be dead to sin, we still listen to it.

But God does not leave the Christian to live this life all on his own. In addition to making us new, He gives us His Spirit. Now the transforming work of the Cross is essential for the presence of the Spirit, for the Spirit is holy, and holiness will not dwell with impurity. The mere fact that the Holy Spirit indwells the Christian shows that, in some sense, the Christian is holy. The work of the Cross in making us new paves the way for the presence of the Spirit. The work of the Cross builds out of us a home for the Spirit. The Cross makes us into a temple for God’s Spirit (I Cor 6:19-20). No Cross and no Resurrection equals no indwelling Spirit.

But in Christ, we do have the Spirit. This is the next essential piece to the reality of the Christian life. Not only are we new creatures in Christ, but we have God Himself, through the Spirit, living inside us. God has changed who we are, and God has come to dwell in us.

Stop.

Meditate on that.

God has changed who you are.

And God now dwells inside you.

Hallelujah! That is good news

Feb

2021

Not I But Christ

I am crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20)

Praise you, Father, for the grace of the Cross. I wrestle to live out the life of the Cross. It is hard. But it is real and powerful. As you have given me the grace of the Cross and Resurrection, give me also the grace to live out the Cross and the Resurrection in my life, resting in my Savior.

Living the Christian life does not begin with you. Christianity is not about you. It’s not about how good you are or how strong you can be or what wonderful deeds you could do if only you applied yourself or reached deep inside and seized your full potential. That’s Disney.

Christianity, however, claims quite the opposite. It says that on your own you are sinful and utterly incapable of living any kind of righteous life. It says not only that you sin but that you sin naturally. It’s not just that you violate God’s will; it’s that you can’t help but do so. Sin runs deep in your heart, and you can’t get it out.

The reason we do not live the Christian life is that we cannot live it. It is too high, and we are too corrupt. And yet people still think that normal human nature can be godly. They think this way because they want to, and they justify such thinking by lowering God’s standard of holiness and by flattering our corruption. I have seen hundreds of people who protest that they are not so bad, but I have never seen one of them actually live for God.

They say they are good and then explode in anger at their kids or reveal impatience or cut corners at work. They say they are good and then change Scripture so they can feel good about themselves. They don’t believe that their lust is adultery or that their greed is idolatry. They say they are good but then live for their own comfort or for a political end or for anything but God. No. They won’t live for God, and part of the reason why is that they think they are already good enough. They don’t need God, and when you don’t need God, you don’t go to Him or live for Him.

People who think they can live the Christian life on their own just by being good are not honest with themselves. They have sold themselves a pipedream, and unfortunately, if they persist, they will take their goodness with them all the way to hell. Heaven is for sinners who know they need God. Hell is for good people who rely on their goodness (Lk 18:9-14).

Christianity is simply not about you and what you can do. Christianity begins with Christ and what He has done. This different perspective is so fundamental to the Christian life that if you get it wrong, you get everything else wrong as well. Therefore, since the Christian life begins with Christ, let’s focus on Him and on what He has done to bring about in us the life He wants.

But before we see what Jesus has done, we must first see the real problem we face. Sin is the basic problem of the human race, the cancer in our souls. Thus, for Jesus to be of any real help to us, He must deal with our sin. He has done so through two works on one Cross.

The first work of the Cross addresses our sins – our thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds. The second work of the Cross addresses our sin – the nature inside us that produces those thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds. Think of it this way. A criminal produces a crime. In dealing with the criminal, one must address issues of justice as well as the damage the criminal’s deeds have caused. But if you stop there, you still have the same criminal who produced those deeds. You have dealt with his crimes, but you haven’t changed him. Now the Cross and subsequent Resurrection are God’s response to our sins and to our sin nature. They deal with our deeds, but they also deal with us.

Concerning our sins, the Cross serves justice and repairs the damage that our sins do to our relationship with God. The blood of Christ appeases the wrath of God (Rm 3:25), administers the justice of God (Rm 3:26), declares us righteous (Rm 5:9), cleanses us from all sin (I Jn 1:7), redeems us from the pit (Eph 1:7), brings forgiveness (Eph 1:7), and makes peace with God (Col 1:20).

Because of the precious blood of Christ, the penalty for our sins is paid. We are criminals for whom justice has already been served. When God looks at us, He does not see our sins. He sees the blood. Thus, we are clean in God’s sight. We are righteous in His eyes. We have peace with Him. We are forgiven. When by faith we are in Christ, we cannot outsin the reach of the Cross. The Cross covers all our sins – past, present, and future.

The Christian must hold onto this fact. We still sin, and if we are to live the Christian life, we must begin by holding onto the fact that in Christ our sins do not defeat us. God still loves us. God is still for us. God forgives us. Our relationship with Him is still intact. In Christ, none of that will ever change. The forgiveness of God is not an excuse to continue in sin. It is a comfort that our sins can never separate us from God. Never. The Cross makes us right with God. Forever. By dealing with our sins, the Cross gives us spiritual security, and this security is foundational to living a godly life. Resting in the blood of Christ and the forgiveness it procures is foundational to living a Christian life because we cannot live the Christian life without Christ, and when we sin, Satan uses our sins to drive a wedge between us and Christ. He wants our sins to separate us from Christ because he knows that if we pull away from Christ, we will fail to live the Christian life. We are then no threat to Satan. We have to hold onto the Cross because it is the Cross that pulls us back to Christ when we sin.

But the Cross does more than wipe away our sins. It also crucifies us. Here is how Galatians puts it:

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet it is not I but

Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20)

May I never boast in anything except the Cross of Christ. Through

it the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. (Gal 6:14)

Here is how Romans puts it:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may

abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ

Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with

him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised

from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in

newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like

his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the

body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer

be enslaved to sin. For he who has died has been set free from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live

with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will

never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the

death he died he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives he lives

to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive

to God in Christ Jesus. (Rm 6:1-11)

Here is how Colossians puts it:

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world . . . (Col 2:20)

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above,

where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on

things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have

died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:1-3)

In Christ it is not just that our sins have been wiped away. In Christ, you and I are dead. We have been crucified with Christ. We have been buried with Christ. We have died and our lives are now hidden with Christ. Our old self has died. And all of this happened at the Cross.

In addition, we have been raised to a new life in Christ. We have been united with Him in His Resurrection. We are in Christ. When He died, we died; when He rose, we rose.

What all these Scriptures are saying is not just that we have forgiveness but that we have a new nature, a new life in Christ. In these texts, God is dealing not so much with our sins but with us. In Christ the old you is dead; the new you has come (II Cor 5:17). In Christ, you are no longer the same person. The Christian, thus, is capable of living in righteousness, not on his own but in Christ. I don’t mean that the Christian always does live in righteousness but that the Christian has in Christ the resources to do so. The unbeliever does not have these resources.

The Christian response to this second work of the Cross is to believe it and to set our minds on the things appropriate for the new nature. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rm 6:11). And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal 2:20). Seek the things that are above . . . Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things (Col 3:1-2). If I could describe as simply as possible how to live the Christian life in steps, it would begin this way:

Step 1: The Cross and Resurrection. In Christ, you are clean and forgiven and nothing can come between you and God. In Christ, your old, sin nature is dead, and you are a new person. This step is what God has done in Christ. It has already been accomplished, it is grace, and without it you can do nothing to live the Christian life.

Step 2: Believe Step 1. Rest in Step 1. Live in Step 1. If you do not live in Step 1, there is no living the Christian life. Period. The Christian must know in the depths of the heart who Christ is, what Christ has done, and who He has made us to be in Him. This knowledge is not intellectual knowledge. It involves heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Step 3: Walk in Christ. You cannot walk in Christ unless you are first in Christ (Step 1) and know that you are in Him (Step 2). Walking in Christ then entails all sorts of specifics: hardship and suffering, speaking the truth, sexual purity, loving your difficult boss, freedom from greed, humility, joy, service, and more.

The biggest problem Christians have in living the Christian life is that they focus on the details of Step 3 instead of the foundations of Steps 1 and 2. They know that pornography is sin, so they grit their teeth and work on avoiding it. They then fail because they try to fight pornography in their own strength quite apart from the Cross and Resurrection. They are new creatures in Christ, but they rely on their old self to live a new life. They know what is good and simply try to do it.

But the Christian life does not begin with you. It begins with Christ who lives in you, who loves you and gave Himself for you (Gal 2:20). The Christian life is a life of “not I but Christ.” This is a much higher life to live than the life that says merely “go be good.” That life is cheap and shallow. That life wants to be good but can’t. That life cheapens godliness by lowering God’s heavenly standard to what we can do. That life eliminates Christ and the Cross. It rips all of the power and depth from life and then pretends to have substance. It has none.

The Christian life, however, requires Christ. It also requires a new nature. But because of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian has Christ and a new nature. This is who we are. When we forget who we are, we have greater problems living how we ought. And quite often we forget because it is easy to take our eyes off of Christ.

The Christian life is hard. It involves struggle and work and hardship and persecution. But the Christian life is simple. It centers on Christ.

Jan

2021

A New Life

unless one is born again . . . (Jn 3:3)

Father, I praise you that in Christ you have made me new. By your grace, please set my eyes on your glory, your kingdom, and the work you have done through Jesus Christ.

I want to begin talking about the Christian life – what it is and how to live it. And right away, I need to say two things. The first is that the Christian life encompasses everything: your work, your money, your relationships, your family, your sex life, how you use your time, what you read or what you watch on TV, how you speak, how you think about government, education or your neighbor, what your purpose in life is, how you think about human nature or your own sin, where your hope comes from, who you trust, how your pray . . . You get the idea. Now obviously, when I talk about the Christian life, I can’t talk about everything all at once, so over time, I plan on talking about many different topics – one at a time. And when I am done, there will be many more topics that I will not have addressed. That’s just reality.

The second thing I need to say about the Christian life is that it flows out of Christians. I do not mean that all Christians always live the life they are supposed to live, nor do I mean that nonChristians never do nice things. I mean simply that a Christian life requires a Christian. If you understand what a Christian life is, this statement is a bit obvious, but many need the reminder, for too many people think that living a Christian life is merely a matter of how you live. Therefore, before we get into how you live, I want to focus on something far more important.

When a man or woman becomes a Christian, a new life begins. This is why we call conversion a new birth. But if you listen to many Christians talk, you would get the impression that conversion is the end of the road. We pray for God to save Ella, and when He does, we offer some thanks and move on, as if God is now finished with Ella. This thinking is grossly shallow and produces grossly shallow Christians.

We follow popular portrayals of Christianity instead of Biblical ones. We consider conversion to be a matter of saying some words and/or changing some ugly behavior – drinking or swearing or whatever. We do not consider conversion to be . . . well . . . a conversion. In the New Testament, a conversion is precisely what the word means. A convert was one person but is now a new person. Conversion is radical. It changes who you are. In the New Testament, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature (II Cor 5:17), his old self has been crucified and he has been given a new life in Christ (Rm 6:1-11, Gal 2:20, Col 3:1-4).

Conversion goes deeper than we think. It changes not just external words or deeds but cuts to the heart. It changes your very soul. Conversion makes a new man or a new woman. And when it does so, that man or woman begins a new life. Conversion does not change merely what you do. It changes who you are. And who you are is more important than what you do. God wants you, not just your works.

This is how Christianity operates. It does not focus on improving behavior. God wants to change your heart and soul and not just make you polite and nice. Christianity works from the inside out. God knows that when He changes you, your behavior will follow. When God gets the heart He gets everything, and God is quite insistent upon having everything.

We do not like this sort of talk. It is much easier to talk about social justice or sexual purity or reading the Bible. It is much easier to be a nice, kind person and claim that we are part of God’s kingdom simply because we are nice. That’s how most religions operate, and it is how much of the secular world thinks religion should operate. But it is not Christian. In addition, we don’t like to talk of God insisting upon having everything because then we are not the center of the universe; and if there is one thing we humans want, it is to be at the center of the universe.

Therefore, if anyone wishes to live the Christian life, he must not merely change his behavior. He must change his identity. The Christian life is not merely an old person doing new deeds. It is a new person. With a new heart. But you and I cannot change who we are any more than a sow can become a woman. In order for our identity to change, we need power from the outside. The Bible calls this power “grace.”

A Christian, thus, is someone whom God has changed. As we begin to talk about living a godly life, please understand that the foundation for such a life is a godly heart, and a godly heart does not exist until Christ changes it and dwells in it. You cannot have a Christian life without Christ.

For the Christian, this means that living a godly life is not a matter of gritting your teeth and grinding out good deeds. You know: “I will share my faith. I will stay away from sexual images. I will give more to the poor. This is because a Christian life is not primarily a matter of what you do. It certainly includes what you do, but it is so much more. It involves who you are.

Thus, for the Christian, the process of living the Christian life does not begin by focusing on being more patient or less angry. It begins by focusing on Christ. And being His. You cannot live a Christian life by focusing primarily on the life. Pursue patience and you will fail. Pursue a pure mind and you will fail. But pursue Christ and He makes you new. It is Christ who works patience and purity in you. But He doesn’t do this all at once. He does it through struggle, through forcing you to trust Him in the crucible of life. He wants you to see Him and to see who He has made you to be. If we do not believe who He is or who He has made us to be, then we will advance little in the Christian life. The real advances in the Christian life come by grace through Christ. And they come through our holding onto the person and work of Christ.

This holding onto Christ comes by faith. Therefore, the foundational work in a Christian life involves a real change in who we are. It involves Christ making us a new person. It then involves faith in the Savior who has made us new and faith in what He says about who we now are. We believe we are new or we don’t. If we don’t, then concerning this new life, we remain stuck in the garage. And you never get anywhere by staying in the garage.

Dec

2020

Christmas or christmas

At Christmas the world changed. At Christmas God became man. At Christmas God so loved the world that He gave His son. Christmas is, after all, a love story.

If Christmas is true, then your king and mine was born in a stable. If Christmas is true, then Jesus is the center of everything. If Christmas is true, then the only appropriate response is to bow and worship.

But this world doesn’t want to bow and worship, so it ignores the central fact of Christmas and celebrates instead its own christmas.

You and I are then left with Christmas or christmas. Both holidays are present simultaneously. Everywhere you look you see christmas, for it shouts and presses itself forward with a marketing campaign any corporation would envy.

But Christmas is quiet, like a starry night outside Bethlehem. Christmas stills your soul. Christmas points you beyond christmas. Christmas opens your heart to the love of God. Christmas is far more wondrous than the marketing campaign, for Christmas reveals the astounding humility and grace of God.

The holiday of christmas changes the season by plastering on thick makeup. But Christmas changes the heart . . . forever.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Dec

2020

What Does the Bible Say?

I sat on a student panel tasked with investigating the morality of abortion. It was the 1970s, and I was in high school and had not yet made up my mind on the issue. As the panel discussed the various arguments flying around the culture, one student asked a question that hit me like a bucket of water.

“What does the Bible say?”

I was just beginning my Christian life, and I didn’t know what the Bible said, but somehow I knew that if the Bible addressed abortion, that student’s question was the key to this issue. Not everyone on the panel may have ascribed authority to the Bible, but I knew that as a Christian I had to.

Authority comes in many varieties, and people give different levels of authority to different types of authorities. Appeals to science, to reason, to freedom, to economics, to emotion, to culture, to government, to Scripture are like sergeants, captains, colonels, and generals in an army. They all have a measure of authority at times, but they cannot all have the same level of authority. Some authorities must outrank others.

Now I knew that if I was to follow Jesus, the Bible had to be commander in chief when it spoke. I knew that if the entire culture lined up on one side and the Bible lined up on the other, I would have to fall where the Bible was.

This principle – the pre-eminence of Scripture – is a hallmark of Christian thinking and flows from the nature of Scripture. If the Bible is God’s Word, it must be pre-eminent. If it is not pre-eminent to you, you do not treat it as God’s Word.

Unfortunately, for most people of every culture the Bible is not pre-eminent. When it comes to thinking about God, human nature, sin, faith, heaven, hell, spiritual matters or moral issues, most people give priority to something other than the Bible. It may be their upbringing, their culture, their friends, social media, a professor or popular teacher, Hollywood, a political party, or their own desires. Many people say they honor the Bible as an authority, and they may give it a measure of credence, but they still dishonor it when they fail to give it priority. They may honor it as a soldier honors a sergeant. The problem is that Scripture is commander in chief and not a mere sergeant. You dishonor the commander in chief when you treat him as a sergeant.

The church in the West thinks more like the West than it does like the New Testament. We have let the culture define love and followed it. We have let the culture define equality and believed it. We have let the culture tell us that it is arrogant to think God has provided only one way. We have adopted cultural ways of thinking about sexuality. We have adopted cultural thinking about human identity. Many of us do not believe we are fallen, or if we confess that we are, we often think that our sin is not that egregious. We wonder why God would condemn us for such “minor” transgressions as lust or anger, especially when the anger is justified.

Some of us speak, as the culture does, as if political activism is the ultimate answer to our problems. Others speak, as the culture does, as if racism is the sin above all sins. We can forgive an adulterer perhaps, but we can’t forgive a racist. Some follow the culture by saying that the husband is not the head of the wife. Others follow the culture by saying that a person’s sexual identity defines him or her. Others follow the culture by thinking they can be independent from the body of Christ. They don’t need to commit to a church. Or so they think. Many follow the culture by adopting a consumer mindset when it comes to their local church. They think the church exists to feed them and not that they exist to serve the church. We are good at meeting our needs. That’s the culture. But we won’t die to self. That’s Scripture.

We have bought into what social media tells us. We have bought into what our friends say. We have bought into what we see on Netflix. We have bought into what our favorite political party says. We have bought into the culture, and in doing so, we have abandoned Scripture. We have ignored the commander in chief and listened to a sergeant.

One of the marks of a thriving faith is that the Bible trumps the culture. Your culture (whatever it is) is hostile to what Scripture says, and it wants to draw you away. Different cultures do this in different ways, but all cultures do this. If you give priority to your culture, you lose spiritual authority and power, your faith grows limp, and you begin to live like everyone else.

One of the keys to living a Christian life is listening to the right authority. When you listen to Scripture above all other authorities, you thrive. When you listen to other authorities above Scripture, you wither.

If you want to know what you listen to most, look at your free time. How much of your time do you spend in the Scriptures, in prayer and in seeking God, versus how much do you spend on social media, watching movies, listening to music, or otherwise absorbing your culture? Where you most engage your mind is where your highest authority is. If you spend 10 minutes of your free time each day reading Scripture and two hours absorbing your culture, then you are giving your culture priority, and your faith will suffer. If you want to make God’s Word a priority in your life, make it priority in your time. You are always feeding your mind. The question is – what are you feeding it?

Nov

2020

Wanting God’s Word

I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food. (Job 23:12)

I love you, O Lord. Therefore, I love your Word. Feed me on it.

The Bible is God’s Word.

Many voices deny this fact. They claim that the Bible is man’s book, not God’s book. They claim that the Bible is culturally conditioned and, thus, suspect when it comes to addressing people today. They claim that the Bible is full of contradictions or that the events it relates never happened. They claim that the Bible is cruel, oppressive to women, or sexually backward.

Today the various voices against the Bible are loud and occupy the seats of power within all cultures. The Bible stands as the most attacked and most censored book in history, and among the power brokers of Western culture, its ideas are roundly mocked and brushed aside.

But the Bible still stands as God’s Word. Despite the efforts to discredit and dismantle Scripture, it still changes lives, brings peace, frees people from sin, reconciles enemies, puts joy in the heart, and more. This is because the Bible is God’s Word.

The power of the Bible is not in the book on its own but in the God who stands behind it. The Bible has power because ultimately it comes from Christ and points to Christ.

For this reason, those who know God love the Bible. Indeed, one of the marks of genuine faith is a love for Scripture, for if you love God, you want to know what He says.

Unfortunately, however, too many who go by name of Christian have no desire to know what God says. They work their jobs, go to their schools, raise their children, eat, shop, play, and live life as if God has nothing to say about who they are and how they should live. They are so busy living life that they have no time to listen to God. They don’t even think about listening to Him. But they consider themselves good people (churchgoing people even) and, thus, Christians. This phenomenon is not Christianity. You do not see it in Scripture.

But most people in church don’t know Scripture. They don’t take time to read it, to meditate on it, and to learn from it so that they might obey it. And so they disobey it (all along thinking they obey it) because they love other things more than they love God. For if they had loved God, they would have taken the time to learn what He says.

The irony is that many of these people would tell you that the Bible is God’s book, but they live like the people who tell you that the Bible is man’s book. They somehow think they revere the Bible when in reality they pay scant attention to it.

God calls you to know Him, to love Him, and to obey Him. From the heart. And a heart that wants God, wants His Word.

mdemchsak

Food for the Soul

Needing the Church

The Church Command

Desires

The Christian Life and the Christian Reality

Not I But Christ

A New Life

Christmas or christmas

What Does the Bible Say?

Wanting God’s Word

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